We've had similar threads before, but the search function does not like the word SIN.

I have a player, an Ork infiltration specialist who's family is a very large SINless extended litter of orks living in a squat in Redmond. The family makes it's money through various criminal operations. There is a family gang who deal drugs and shake down the "tourists" and fight other gangs, and Orange, the player character, is smarter and more ambitious than his brothers and cousins, and has the skills to be a pretty competent Shadowrunner.

At the start of this game, however, he's been burned. The team he was running with got killed and now he's by himself, a low charisma ork with no contacts to speak of but his family, and he's got a chip that he needs to get to the Johnson before he gets impatient and has Orange geeked too.

So Orange has to drop a message for the Johnson with the bartender at Club Penumbra, and he's worried about getting jumped outside the club, so he's managed to convince some of his ganger family to come along for backup. However, Club Penumbra is downtown Seattle, which has some pretty high security ratings, and Orange is the only family member with a fake SIN.

How should I run this? Should Orange be able to get his buddies into downtown Seattle, or will they be spotted by the authorities and get beaten up/arrested for having no ID? What do you guys think? What's the mobility of SINless?

Downtown Seattle is an area that requires all metahumans to broadcast a SIN and ID. Vehicles will be required to be subscribed to gridlink (and to do that, they need to have valid registration, tags, etc, etc). You can't ride mass-transit without an ID. So... Orange has a couple of options.

Get a passible vehicle that's registered, subscribed to gridlink, and put his buddies in it and drive downtown. As long as they all stay in the vehicle, his ID should be good enough to pass any scrutiny. If they get stopped or his buddies decide to jump out of the vehicle... then bad things may happen.

Other option: get all his buddies cheap IDs. Try to make sure they don't get into any trouble while downtown. However, if they are obviously scruffy, out of place, wearing gang colors, or carrying weapons that their ID doesn't show a permit for... bad things may happen.

Third Option: go alone. Expect that being in a downtown high security zone, outside a very popular and high class club, will prevent anyone from getting "jumped" on the street.

Fake IDs level 1 are your friend. Just, for god's sake, don't do anything that draws attention. Best thing would be to stop being an Ork. It's called racial profiling, and it works.

Basically if you are going downtown you need a fake SIN, a level 1 fake SIN will usually work for most purposes, you can walk around town, get on a bus, rent a coffin, and buy food from your local stuffer shack. For those kinda things they just more or less check to see if you have a SIN just to keep legal, but really don't care if it's real or not. That said, a level 1 SIN won't even withstand passive investigation by someone who actually cares, so going into the wrong store or club, or walking into a high security part of town is dangerous.

No one said being SINless was a walk in the park, hell I'n not sure I'd even try that with a level 1 fake SIN.

One little blurb that I think gets overlooked is that even if you SIN fails the check, they simply ask you a couple questions about the SIN itself and chalk it up to computer error. In any place where your ID isn't really an issue (that is, most day-today stuff, as opposed to buying guns or walking into a high-sec hotel or onto a corporate campus), even a level 1 fake SIN will get you by.

Of course, this also means you should know your fake SIN inside and out.

Did I mention that Orange's only vehicle is a Harley Davidson Scorpion and he has 30 nuyen to his name?

Of course he's a first time shadowrun player, and I've explained a lot to him, but I'm not sure he's grasped the concept. What should I do? Should I just tell him? Should I let him try and have a roll to see if lone star grabs them?

I say tell the player something like "There's some things that you, as a player, should know about the setting. Your character might not know, or might forget, but I don't want you as a player to feel blindsided when those factors affect the story. One of those factors: whoever runs security, for any area which actually has someone running security (and that's pretty much all of Seattle except the Barrens), is gonna have machines scanning all the time for live metahuman bodies and identity markers such as RFID chips and comlinks broadcasting their presence. Any time those machines notice a metahuman that doesn't carry something signalling a valid ID, they alert security staff, who will want to investigate. Furthermore, your character knows that his family and friends from the Barrens mostly don't have valid IDs."

Kindly point him to p. 160 of Runners Companion.

There are always ways around scanners. However that being said there is common knowledge that shadowrunners should know. Like how scans work and if your character has a high enough logic or just does 10 seconds of a data search then they can find out the way the interior of Seattle works. Also he is an infiltration specialist. Maybe you should beat him with a stick so he realizes that maybe he should use his skills around the club instead of getting an ork gang as backup. Even if they go to the club with fake SINs and fake licenses I think they will stick out like a HUGE sore thumb. Sorry but gangers from the sticks trying to get into a posh nightclub are probably going to get shot, or arrested, or kicked out of the area as quickly as possible.

As for shady dealings in the area that I live. There is a posh area called Piedmont where the cops actually find the "vagrants" who have "wondered" in from Oakland, grab them and "give them a lift" back to downtown Oakland. I would say expect somewhat of the same except throw in a savage beating from the local law enforcement to make sure the gang doesn't come back.

Re-reading his character sheet here, he's got Security Procedures (Megacorporate): 3 (+2) and Security Design (Corp): 2 (+2), so it's the kind of thing he should know.


Will do.


Should I suggest that he puts on his chameleon suit and tries to sneak into Club Penumbra? A runner bar in downtown Seattle?

On the subject of having the gangers get picked up by scanners. What are the chances? Should they just be insta-spotted by authorities? Or should I do some sort of generic roll to see whether a drone picks them up loitering down the street from the club?

The fastest way to get IDs might be to mug some people for their commlinks... So long as no one checks beyong "SIN broadcast" it might work, but if they make even cursory checks on metatype, you'd be hosed.

Any chance of boosting a vehicle, given the Scorpion's unsuitability for mass transport...? Adds another layer of complication to potentially have to deal with: if the ride gets flagged as stolen, the Star will certainly detect it in DownTown.

Soloing it sounds like the best plan. If something goes wrong in the club, having his family come in knocking heads together is likely just going to get them all killed or banged up. Is that what your player wants?

Having a shadowrunner sneak into a shadowrunner bar isn't going to get you killed IMO. I'm sure it happens, but if you want to sneak into the front door and take off the hood of your chameleon suit it's probably not going to draw tons of heat. People will know he is a shadowrunner, but he will be going to a shadowrunner bar. It might not even be that uncommon for shadowrunners to sneak up to a shadowrunner bar.

On scanning I would say it depends on what the orc gang is trying to do. If they are riding in on motor cycles they won't get far. On riding in a car they still might be picked up if the glass isn't tinted. If it's tinted they will still have to know their way around to avoid check points. I think "smuggling routes" is the proper knowledge skill that would apply to this situation when trying to sneak your gang into the area. As a GM if he has this might I suggest the sewers, but then tell him at the same time that the sewers might have their own risk involved in taking it.


I think the biggest thing is you don't ever want a gang sitting outside of a Shadowrunner bar. It's asking for a lot of trouble and I think you should lead off with this fact. If you are bringing muscle to a place that is filled with some people who alone could probably waste his entire gang I think the fear should be "getting jumped before you reach the bar." Don't start trouble at a shadowrun bar, and bringing a gang might draw heat that the bar or its patrons don't want. Runners never like it when Lone Star or any other enforcement agency is at their doorstep meddling around. You might want to make this very clear to a former shadowrunner. This is stuff he should know.

He's a sinless Ork ganger. I think taking the boyz with him is the most reasonable approach you could expect. It should work, but he should pay some price for it. Still, I think it's pretty nice to see him take his gang with him, because it's such an in-character approach, it allows for a plot hook (getting one or two of them out of Lone Star custody), and it will teach him a lot about running the Shadows. If he figures out a somewhat smart approach, they might even get away with it.

If his character is experienced with that kind of stuff, you should probably tell him that it's not a brilliant idea to have a group of short fuse gangers watching your back downtown.